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Harvard Journal of African American Policy: 2011 Edition
Actuating Equity: Historical and Contemporary Analyses of African American
Access to Selective Higher Education from Sweatt to the Top 10 Percent Law
by Julian Vasquez Heilig, Richard J. Reddick, Choquette Hamilton, and Laurel Dietz
Julian Vasquez Heilig is an award-winning researcher and teacher. He
obtained his Ph.D. in education administration and policy analysis and a
master’s in sociology from Stanford University. He also holds a master’s of
higher education and a bachelor’s in history and psychology from the
University of Michigan. He is currently Assistant Professor of Educational
Policy and Planning and African and African Diaspora Studies (by
courtesy) at the University of Texas at Austin. Vasquez Heilig’s current
research interests include issues of access, diversity, and equity in higher
education. For more information on his research visit
http://julianvasquezheilig.info.
Richard J. Reddick is Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the
University of Texas at Austin, where he coordinates the M.Ed. Program in
College and University Student Personnel Administration and serves as a
faculty affiliate in the John L. Warfield Center for African and
African American Studies. Reddick’s research focuses on the experiences of
Black faculty at predominantly White institutions, faculty mentoring
relationships with students, diversity in higher education, and sociocultural
adaptation of Black families. He is a 2010-2011 Woodrow Wilson National
Fellowship Foundation Career Enhancement Fellow and a 2007 Ed.D.
graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Choquette Hamilton is currently the Executive Director for Student Diversity
Initiatives and Director of the Multicultural Information Center for the
Division of Diversity and Community Engagement at the University of Texas
at Austin. Hamilton received her bachelor of arts in sociology and African
and African American studies from the University of Texas at Austin, a
master’s in elementary education from St. Joseph’s University, and a
master’s in government administration from the University of
Pennsylvania. She is currently working on her Ph.D. in educational policy
and planning. Hamilton’s research focuses on college access for African
American students.
Laurel Dietz is a doctoral student in educational policy and planning at the
University of Texas at Austin. Dietz received her B.S. degree in mathematics
and French education at North Dakota State University and M.A. degree in
foreign language education at the University of Texas at Austin. She is an
experienced secondary mathematics and ELL teacher who has taught both in
the United States and abroad. Her research interests are teacher preparation
quality indicators including the mentoring of beginning and pre-service
teachers and how rhetoric influences teacher preparation policy.
Cristóbal Rodríguez is an assistant professor in the College of Education at
New
Mexico State University. Cristóbal's research focus centers around
concentrated
diverse demographics, particularly in the U.S./Mexico Borderlands, and
explores
the variation of policy development, implementation, and results and their
influence on access throughout the educational pipeline. Cristóbal received
his
Ph.D. in Educational Policy & Planning from The University of Texas at
Austin,
and serves as the University Council for Educational Administration Associate
Director of Graduate Student Development.
The University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin) opened its doors on
September 15, 1883, under the premise that admission be equally
accessible regardless of gender or religion (University of Texas 1975). Yet,
the incipient notion of equality at UT-Austin was limited as race could
preclude entry. Jim Crow stipulated White students attended White schools
and Black students attended Black schools—whether they be K-12 or
institutions of higher education (State Department of Education 1935).
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) had legalized segregation as long as there were
“separate but equal” institutions and facilities for Blacks. Since there were
separate Black universities in Texas such as Prairie View State Normal and
Industrial College (later called Prairie View A&M) and Texas State University
for Negroes (later called Texas Southern University), racial segregation at
UT-Austin was legal (Shabazz 2004).
Before the 1950s, Blacks in Texas could not legally attend selective
traditionally White institutions of higher education, including the University
of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin), because of the “separate but equal” doctrine
(State Department of Education 1935). This changed when the U.S.
Supreme Court desegregated graduate and professional schools in the
landmark court case of Sweatt v. Painter (1950). Sweatt also set an
important precedent for Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which
effectively overturned Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and the “separate but
equal” doctrine in all public schools. Although these cases ended de jure
segregation for Black students, access to higher education in Texas, and
elsewhere, remained a challenge due to the social and cultural contextual
barriers that resulted from long-standing systemic and legal discrimination.
The Lone Star State has struggled to increase racial and ethnic diversity
within its traditionally White flagship institutions since Sweatt. The University
of Texas at Austin attempted to address the persisting underrepresentation
of students of color on campus through several programs, including minority
recruitment in the 1960s, diversity recruitment plans negotiated by the U.S.
Justice Department in the late 1970s, and the implementation of affirmative
action in the 1980s. However, all of these proved to be false starts, and
then, in 1996, Hopwood v. Texas brought such targeted efforts to a halt.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit decided in Hopwood that
admissions practices considering race at the UT-Austin School of Law were
unconstitutional. In 1997, then Texas Attorney General Dan Morales issued
an opinion on the Hopwood case and applied its ruling to all areas in higher
education including admissions, financial aid, and scholarships.
In response to the Texas attorney general’s interpretation of Hopwood,
Texas House Bill 588 was filed in 1997 by Irma Rangel (D-Kingsville) and
passed during the 75th Legislature. The bill, created by a coalition of
lawmakers, faculty members, and community activists, called for the
automatic admission to any public university in Texas of any student that
graduated in the top 10 percent of his or her class. The original intent was to
promote geographic, regional, and racial diversity by capitalizing on
residential and secondary school segregation in the state. In theory, HB 588
would be a race-neutral admissions practice that would provide greater
access to selective higher education to all qualified students in Texas.
However, the question remains as to whether the Top Ten Percent Plan
(TTPP) created greater diversity relative to past efforts. As a result, the
purpose of this article is to understand the historical and contemporary
access of Black students to selective higher education in Texas. In this
analysis we use the state’s flagship institution: the University of Texas at
Austin.
We begin with a literature review that examines the evolution of selective
admissions, legislative enactments, and judicial decisions from Jim Crow to
the TTPP. We follow this with the first estimate of historical Black enrollment
at UT-Austin. Using this unique data, we conduct a representation analysis
of the proportion of Blacks enrolled at UT-Austin relative to statewide
population estimates at seven points in time over the past seventy years.
The second part of our analysis examines whether the TTPP has increased
Black enrollment at UT-Austin. We then analyze cross-sectional data to
understand Black TTPP students’ college choice, persistence, and graduation
rates. We conclude with a discussion factoring in contextual and historical
events that have thwarted efforts to increase Black participation at UTAustin.
Considering the continuing challenge of the underrepresentation of Blacks at
selective postsecondary institutions in the United States and a shift away
from thinking of racial grouping for pursuing claims against the state, a
historical analysis aligned with contemporary data to contextualize key
events and policies is important to illuminate the continuing struggle for
equity in admissions for Blacks. As a result, this article seeks to address the
following questions: Has the underrepresentation of Blacks in selective
higher education in Texas improved relative to their statewide population
since the civil rights era? Have Black applications and enrollment increased
in selective higher education in the midst of the TTPP? Have TTPP Black
students chosen to enroll in selective institutions of higher education? Are
there differences in TTPP Black persistence and graduation by institutional
selectivity?
Historical and Contemporary Research
Access, Opportunity, and Adjudication: 1952-1969
The literature review begins in the 1950s and details the role of legal
enactments in the context of the desegregation era and the impact of those
enactments on Texas’s K-12 public schools and the UT-Austin. Specifically,
we consider how pervasive and hostile attitudes toward desegregation
influenced the speed with which students of color had access to all levels of
education in Texas. We then transition to the impact of the civil rights
movement on access and opportunity.
In 1946, Heman Marion Sweatt, a Black veteran, applied for, and was denied
admission to, the UT-Austin School of Law. Sweatt filed suit against UTAustin in Texas’s 126th District Court alleging that this denial was an
infringement of his rights under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S.
Constitution. At the time, there were no separate Black law schools in Texas
(Lavergne 2010). After six months, Judge Roy C. Archer of the 126th District
Court decided that if the UT-Austin Board of Regents created a separate
first-class university law school then the UT-Austin School of Law would not
be required to accept Blacks (Duren and Iscoe 1979, 3). Sweatt appealed to
the U.S. 3rd Court of Appeals, which sent the case back to retrial.
The Sweatt case is dissimilar from the Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada
(1938), University v. Murray (1936), Sipuel v. Board of Regents (1948), and
McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (1950) Southern higher education
desegregation cases as the state of Texas sought to create a “separate but
equal” law school to head off integration at UT-Austin. During the appeal,
the Texas Legislature approved the establishment of the Texas State
University for Negroes (TSUN, later called Texas Southern University or TSU)
in Houston. This new university was created to offer general and professional
programs equivalent to those offered at UT-Austin for Blacks. On March 10,
1947, the school opened, but Sweatt did not attend due to TSUN’s inferior
quality and the NAACP’s desire to integrate White institutions (Lavergne
2010). After the Texas Supreme Court refused Sweatt’s motion for a
rehearing of his case, the NAACP filed the case at the U.S. Supreme Court.
The nation’s highest court ruled on June 5, 1950, that the educational
opportunity for Black and White law students was not “substantially” equal
to meet the equal protection clause under the Fourteenth Amendment, thus,
the UT-Austin School of Law was required to admit Sweatt.
Despite Sweatt, the official end of the Jim Crow era arrived after the U.S.
Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which held
that the Plessy v. Ferguson doctrine of “separate but equal” was
unconstitutional. Following Brown v. Board of Education (1955), the second
Brown decision, the U.S. Supreme Court gave the responsibility for
integrating public schools to local officials under the scrutiny of the federal
courts; in addition, these courts needed to ensure that local officials were
making a “prompt and reasonable start” with “all deliberate speed” (Ogletree
2004). However, this notion of “all deliberate speed” became “all deliberate
slowness” in its implementation in Texas. Then Governor Allan Shivers saw
the Brown decision as a federal invasion into states’ rights on the doctrine of
“separate but equal” and, as such, did not believe that the schools in Texas
needed to change to reflect the Brown decision (Lavergne 2010).
Then Attorney General John Ben Shepperd, reacting to a Texas high court
decision to permit the use of state funds for integrated schools, stated that
though the case settled the law for the state, the time frame for integration
would be a community-by-community decision (Wilson and Segall 2001).
This “slowness” permeated into postsecondary institutions in Texas as well;
although there was to be eventual integration at all levels of the schooling
system in Texas, the speed of integration was to be determined by
educational institutions and not the federal government (i.e., the U.S.
Supreme Court).
In September 1954, four months after Brown, it was UT-Austin’s policy,
according to then President Logan Wilson, to accept Black graduate students
only when the particular programs were not offered in the state’s Black
institutions (Duren and Iscoe 1979). In fact, one year after the Sweatt
decision, Texas Southern University (TSU), the new name for the Texas
State University for Negroes, in concert with UT-Austin, was to provide
bachelor’s and master’s degree programs in arts, sciences, education, and
business and develop professional degree programs in pharmacy and law for
Blacks. UT-Austin would not be in competition for Black graduate students at
TSU nor Prairie View A&M (originally called Prairie View State Normal and
Industrial College). In other words, UT-Austin’s School of Law would accept
Black students due to Sweatt, but it would not admit Black students into
other graduate programs that either TSU or Prairie View A&M offered
(Shabazz 2004).
Black undergraduates were also excluded from undergraduate admissions at
UT-Austin since they could find their majors in other postsecondary
institutions (Duren and Iscoe 1979). This changed in July 1955 when the
university’s Board of Regents decided that the institution would completely
integrate by September 1956. Again, UT-Austin became a progenitor of
access as the first higher education institution in the South to decide to
allow Blacks as undergraduate students. The regents’ decision came only a
few months before Autherine Juanita Lucy enrolled at the University of
Alabama as well as a few months before the U.S. Supreme Court voided
portions of Texas’s Constitution concerning segregation (Clark 1993).
Integration had become inevitable.
There were a variety of structural factors (i.e., legal environment, aptitude
testing, segregation) working in concert to limit the enrollment of Blacks at
UT-Austin. As a result, the integration of public education institutions after
Sweatt and later Brown was a slow process. The U.S. Supreme Court
spurred integration but did not achieve full implementation as Texas public
school districts and postsecondary institutions pursued integration on an
incremental basis. For example, in Austin, Texas, by the spring of 1964, only
14 percent of Black students were attending White schools in the Austin
Independent School District (Wilson and Segall 2001).
In response to civil rights legislation and legal pressures to enact programs
to increase the enrollment of historically underrepresented minority
students, UT-Austin began two admissions programs: the Provisional
Admissions Program (PAP) and the Program for Education Opportunity (PEO)
(Duren and Iscoe 1979; Goldstone 2006). First, in 1962, the Board of
Regents approved a plan to create PAP. This program was designed to admit
students who had not met admissions requirements, including
underrepresented minorities. The program allowed participants to enroll
during the summer session to demonstrate their ability to perform well in a
university setting. If the student could show that he or she could do
satisfactory work in specific courses the student could then qualify for
admission to the university in the fall (Duren and Iscoe 1979). Critics of PAP
pointed out that the program appeared to be aimed toward middle-class
students rather than disadvantaged minorities, as students accepted into the
program typically did not receive additional financial aid assistance from the
university. In addition, due to the intensity of taking twelve credit hours in
the summer, the university administrators did not encourage PAP students
to work. Therefore, low-income students did not have the financial resources
to pay for summer classes. As a result, the reach of the program was limited
for Black and Latina/o students (Goldstone 2006).
Noting the failure of PAP, the university sought to create more access for
Black and Latina/o students by creating the Program for Educational
Opportunity during the 1968-1969 academic year. PEO’s goals were to help
“educationally, culturally, and financially disadvantaged students” who,
based on recommendations and interviews, could be successful at the
postsecondary level but were not able to demonstrate this aptitude on
entrance examinations (Goldstone 2006, 147). Moreover, this program
sought to compensate for inadequately funded and poor-quality K-12
schooling that many Black and Mexican American students were receiving in
Texas that had not adequately prepared them for success on standardized
tests such as the ACT and SAT (Goldstone 2006).
During its first year, 1968-1969, there were twelve Black and thirteen
Latina/o students who attended UT-Austin under this program. Twelve of
these students successfully returned to the university the following academic
year. However, despite this limited success and a recommendation from the
Faculty Council to expand the program, in May 1969, PEO was terminated by
the Board of Regents. The board declared that funds appropriated by the
state legislature and other local institutional monies should not be used for
direct recruitment of students who would not have been admitted to the
university otherwise (Goldstone 2006). Then Board of Regents Chair Frank
C. Erwin stated in front of the Texas State Legislature, “We are turning
down thousands of applicants from Irish, Scotch, Yugoslav . . . and other
descents” because they did not meet the university’s admissions standards
but “at the same time deliberately admit Afro-Americans and Mexican
Americans who fail to meet these same standards” (Morrison 1969 as cited
in Goldstone 2006, 148).
Admissions Tests and the Backlash: 1970-1997
During the 1970s and leading into the early 1980s, UT-Austin sought to
remedy the small pool of eligible Black and Latina/o applicants by allowing
admissions of Latina/os and Blacks with lower test scores to graduate and
undergraduate schools. Whites across the nation began to question whether
their rights were being violated by these practices and sought to limit
affirmative action mechanisms in the courts. Several U.S. Supreme Court
cases changed how universities were able to admit and allocate resources
based upon race. There are three major U.S. Supreme Court cases that had
a significant impact on the use of race in the admissions process at the
undergraduate and graduate levels at UT-Austin: Regents of the University
of California v. Bakke (1978), Hopwood v. Texas (1996), and Grutter v.
Bollinger (2003). These cases emphasized “strict scrutiny” as states were
required by federal courts to show that the racial classifications in law
“served a compelling and legitimate state interest” (Howard 1997, 33).
In 1973, Allan Bakke, a White male applicant, was refused admission to the
University of California Davis Medical School. In Regents of the University of
California v. Bakke, he claimed that the medical school had denied him equal
protection under the Fourteenth Amendment because sixteen seats were
reserved for economically disadvantaged minority students. The U.S.
Supreme Court decided that Bakke should be allowed into the medical school
but that “although race or ethnicity should not demand inclusion or
exclusion, minority racial or ethnic status could constitute a ‘plus’ in an
applicant’s file” (Bickel 1998, 10).
While Bakke was under review at the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Office for
Civil Rights (OCR) began a civil rights review of Texas higher education in
February 1978. The OCR eventually found that Texas had not eliminated
vestiges of de jure segregation (Moses 2001). After thirty months of
negotiations, several court orders, and discussions with two state
administrations, the State of Texas agreed to develop a voluntary higher
education desegregation plan (Moses 2001). A period of foot-dragging
ensued, and by 1983, facing a forty-five-day ultimatum from the Adams v.
Richardson court to develop a desegregation plan, then Texas Attorney
General Mark White encouraged state leaders to adopt a voluntary plan of
action to diversify Texas higher education to “forestall” a direct federal order
to desegregate Texas colleges and universities (Hopwood v. Texas 1996).
The state responded by creating the Texas Educational Opportunity Plan
(TEOP), also known as the Texas Plan (Texas Higher Education Coordinating
Board 1988).
In all, there were three Texas Plans: the first in 1983, the second in 1989,
and a final iteration in 1994 (Scott and Kibler 1998). Each was designed to
strategically address the lack of diversity at Texas’s traditionally White
postsecondary institutions. Over the course of five years, the goal of the first
Texas Plan was to enroll an additional 2,432 Black and 3,190 Latina/o
undergraduates, 240 Blacks and 463 Latina/os in graduate programs, and
100 more Latina/os and Blacks in professional studies at traditionally White
Texas public universities (Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board 1983).
However, by 1986 UT-Austin and its peer universities realized that they were
not meeting their goals. For instance, in the 1984-1985 academic year, at
UT-Austin, there were only about 100 more Black undergraduates than in
1977-1978. For Latina/os, the increase was only thirteen students during
the same time frame (Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board 1986).
Gerald Wright, Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board’s Director of
Equal Opportunity Planning, argued that minority students were not enrolling
into postsecondary institutions because their access was “limited by a
conjunction of social, financial, and political barriers” (Texas Higher
Education Coordinating Board 1986, 6).
From Hopwood to 10 Percent: 1997-Present
Nearly fifty years after the landmark Sweatt case, Cheryl J. Hopwood and
Stephanie C. Haynes, two White females, applied to the UT-Austin School of
Law. When they were rejected, they filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court
stating that they were denied their constitutional guarantee of equal
protection under the law when “less qualified” minorities were admitted.
Both claimed that although they had met the school requirements for
admittance, the law school had “preferential” admissions policies for Black
and Latina/o applicants (Goldstone 2006). Haynes was dismissed from the
suit on February 11, 1993, and ultimately, Douglas Carvell, Kenneth Elliott,
and David Rogers, three White males, joined the existing lawsuit as plaintiffs
alleging claims similar to those of Hopwood (Kauffman and Gonzalez 1997).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled in Hopwood that any
consideration of race or ethnic background by the UT-Austin Law School to
achieve a diverse student body did not apply under the Fourteenth
Amendment. In addition, “the use of race . . . simply cannot be a state
interest compelling enough to meet the steep standard of strict scrutiny”
(Hopwood 1996, 49). This ruling had major implications for all affirmative
action policies at postsecondary institutions in the 5th Circuit. Then Texas
Attorney General Dan Morales instructed all public Texas colleges and
universities to function on a “race-neutral” basis in regard to all their
procedures and policies such as recruitment, retention, financial aid, and
tutoring.
In reaction to the Hopwood court decision and to encourage minority
representation at UT-Austin and Texas A&M University, in 1996 the state
legislature passed House Bill 588 (the Top Ten Percent Plan), which was then
signed into law by Texas Governor George W. Bush. Under this statute, a
Texas student who graduated in the top 10 percent of his or her class
received automatic admission to any state college or university. As with any
new policy, there were arguments on both sides of the issue. Proponents of
this plan argued that this law would increase the number of minority
students at Texas A&M University and UT-Austin, the two public flagship
campuses; opponents contended that the program would only work if
secondary schools remained segregated and the state avoided dealing with
this issue. Others argued that accepting all top 10 percent students would
lower the quality of education at these universities since the plan needed to
accept students from “weaker” schools (Goldstone 2006).
In 2003, race as a criterion amongst many in the admissions process was
reaffirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Grutter v. Bollinger, as the court
ruled constitutional the University of Michigan Law School’s “narrowly
tailored” use of race in admissions since it was not prohibited by the Equal
Protection Clause (Grutter v. Bollinger 2003, 320). As a result of Grutter,
once top 10 percent admissions are completed, UT-Austin is able to consider
race and ethnicity in the admissions process under the category of “other
factors.” In theory, the combination of the TTPP and affirmative action
should have increased Black enrollment relative to past efforts.
Methodology
In order to gain an understanding of how Black undergraduate enrollment at
UT-Austin changed in response to the selective higher education admissions
policy and civil rights history considered in this article, we conducted an
analysis of UT-Austin Cactus yearbooks. We then examined contemporary
data to descriptively consider recent enrollment trends in Texas higher
education since the Hopwood era to understand the impact of the
legislatively mandated TTPP admissions policy.
Historical Black Enrollment
Early in the research process, discussions with the UT-Austin Admissions
and Registrar’s Office revealed that the university did not gather data by
race until the 1970s. To facilitate the estimation of historical Black
enrollment, a novel data-gathering process using the UT-Austin Cactus
yearbook was utilized. The Cactus yearbook has served as the “pictorial
record of change” at the UT-Austin since 1894.
To estimate Black enrollment, the researchers studied yearbook portraits.
Visual assessment of photos as a research method is utilized across
disciplines. John Collier Jr. and Malcolm Collier demonstrated that for many
decades visual anthropologists have been concerned with “visual
observations and the insights that can be gained through the use of camera
records” (1999, 1). Social psychologists have utilized phenotype analysis to
understand attitude and social cognition for many decades (Livingston and
Brewer 2002). Notably, we believe this article is the first to use phenotype
analysis to estimate and analyze the historical enrollment of Black students.
A structured research process was used to develop longitudinal data
estimating Black enrollment at UT-Austin. Each page of the Cactus student
section was ordered by class and contained the student name, hometown,
and student photograph. To organize the data collection, we considered the
portrait together with surnames and hometown, and then counts by
race/ethnicity and gender were determined page by page. To check the
authenticity of the work and moderate validity threats, several research
team members conducted checks by independently examining photos for
coding consistency. A limitation of the work is that the counting method is
not infallible, but it is perhaps the best approach available to estimate
historical enrollment of Blacks.
The historical admissions data-gathering process was conducted in fifteenyear increments tracking backward from Hopwood (yearbooks from 1997,
1982, 1967, 1952, 1937). The researchers also conducted an additional
yearbook count beyond the five fifteen-year time frames to understand the
impact of the TTPP on Black enrollment in 2001, five years after Hopwood.
Of note, we concluded the yearbook counts in 2001, as there was an
important change in yearbook policy (University of Texas 2001b). Typically
there were 14,000 to 15,000 pictures in the Cactus yearbooks. However,
near the start of the decade, the free sittings were transferred to orientation
and were no longer a midyear tradition. This change dramatically reduced
the number of students choosing to take yearbook photos, which limits the
reliability of yearbook-derived data in recent years.
Contemporary Black Enrollment
We used institutional data from UT-Austin’s Office of Information
Management and Analysis and Office of Admissions to examine overall Black
enrollment since 1996’s Hopwood. To understand the enrollment of Black
TTPP students across the state, we utilized data from the Texas Higher
Education Coordinating Board (THECB), the state agency responsible for
planning for improvement of higher education in the state of Texas. The
THECB data includes more than fifty public universities and colleges. The
breadth of the data makes it possible to consider TTPP Black students’
higher education outcomes. We conduct descriptive analysis of crosssectional TTPP Black students’ college choice, persistence, and completion.
Findings
Blacks first matriculated into graduate programs at UT-Austin in the early
1950s. Undergraduate admissions came a few years later in 1956 (Shabazz
2004). As enrollment of undergraduate Blacks was not allowed until 1956,
there were no Black undergraduate students attending the university in the
1937 and 1952 counts (see Table 1).
Table 1 — Estimates of UT-Austin Black Enrollment and
Underrepresentation
Census
Black Total Black
Underrepresentation
1937 0.0% 0.0%
0.0%
14.4%
14.4%
1952 0.0% 0.0%
0.0%
12.7%
12.7%
1967 0.4% 0.4%
0.8%
12.5%
11.7%
1982 0.9% 1.8%
2.7%
12.0%
9.3%
1997 1.3% 2.1%
3.4%
11.5%
8.1%
2001 1.2% 2.5%
3.7%
11.5%
7.8%
Year
Black Black
Male Female
Enrollment data from University of Texas 1937, 1952, 1967, 1982, 1997,
2001b. Census data from Gibson and Jung (2002).
In 1967, arguably near the height of the civil rights movement, Table 1
shows that less than 1 percent of the student population was Black (.4
percent each for male and female). The first UT-Austin collected admissions
data by race available is for fall 1972, when there were 326 Blacks out of a
student population of 39,900 or .8 percent (University of Texas 1976).
Therefore, despite civil rights legislation and a friendlier legal environment,
UT-Austin continued to have an extremely low enrollment of Black students.
Relative to the 1970 Census, Blacks were underrepresented by about 12
percent (see Table 1).
By 1982, civil rights directives—in particular Title VI and affirmative action
enforced by the Adams court—sought to provide wider access for students of
color, though societal barriers affecting prospective entrants such as
inequitable K-12 education remained. Furthermore, despite the noble
intentions of the belated Texas Plans and other outreach programs, UTAustin had not met its promised goals for diversity. As shown in Table 1, a
review of the 1982 Cactus revealed that 2.7 percent (.9 percent male and
1.8 percent female) of the student population at the university was Black.
Notably, this was the first year in the analysis where the estimated
proportion of Black females enrolled exceeded males. We estimate that
Black male enrollment was half of female enrollment. Nearly fifteen years
after the civil rights movement, Blacks remained underrepresented
compared to their statewide population in the 1980 Census by about 9
percent.
By 1997, the backlash against affirmative action had increased to a
crescendo. The Bakke decision in 1978 followed by Hopwood in 1996 spurred
on the opposition. The year after Hopwood, the yearbook analysis suggests
Blacks were 3.4 percent (1.3 percent male and 2.1 percent female) of the
total student population at UT-Austin (see Table 1). The yearbook counts are
similar to matriculation data released by UT-Austin showing Black enrollment
at 3.5 percent (University of Texas 1998). As shown in Table 1, considering
the 2000 Census, Blacks were about 8 percent below their statewide
population.
It is interesting to note that during the first year of the implementation of
the Top Ten Percent Law (1998-1999), the university data on enrollment
proportions was 3.5 percent for Blacks (University of Texas 2001a). In 2001,
several years after the implementation of the TTPP, the yearbook count
estimates the proportion of Blacks at 3.7 percent of the student body. Since
1996, the yearbook analysis illustrates that Blacks appear to show a modest
increase in enrollment at UT-Austin. However, Blacks remained vastly
underrepresented relative to their statewide population (see Table 1).
Top Ten Percent Plan
Ten years of institutional data shows that Black and Latina/o student
enrollment has increased in the midst of the Top Ten Percent Plan. In 2008,
Black students made up 5.6 percent of all incoming freshman and Latina/os
made up 19.9 percent, representing an increase of 2.9 and 7.3 percentage
points from 1997, respectively (see Figure 1).
Figure 1 — Percentage of First-Time Enrolled Applicants by Race at
UT-Austin (Source: Office of Information Management and Analysis,
final enrollment analysis for fall 2008.)
We will now turn to contemporary THECB data on enrollment in Texas public
institutions of higher education to further examine TTPP Black students
enrolled in all public institutions in the state of Texas.
Table 2 — Top 10 Percent College Choice, Texas Public Universities
(Freshman Entering 2000-2003)
Year and University
Type
White
Black
Latina/o
Top-Tier University
58.0%
29.6%
40.6%
Other Texas
University
42.0%
70.4%
59.4%
Grand Total
100%
100%
100%
Top-Tier University
61.6%
31.1%
41.8%
Other Texas
University
38.4%
68.9%
58.2%
Grand Total
100%
100%
100%
Top-Tier University
58.7%
28.6%
38.8%
Other Texas
University
41.3%
71.4%
61.2%
Grand Total
100%
100%
100%
60.9%
29.0%
40.5%
1999-2000
2000-2001
2001-2002
2002-2003
Top-Tier University
Other Texas
University
39.1%
71.0%
59.5%
Grand Total
100%
100%
100%
Top-Tier University
59.8%
29.5%
40.3%
Other Texas
University
40.2%
70.5%
59.7%
Grand Total
100%
100%
100%
1999-2003
We begin by comparing the cross-sectional college choice patterns of
historically underrepresented minority students to White students in Texas
(see Table 2). Across all time periods, Whites show the largest percentage of
TTPP students choosing UT-Austin or Texas A&M, which are the top-tier
universities represented in Table 2, over all other Texas universities. Of
eligible TTPP students, about 40 percent of Latina/os students and 30
percent of Blacks choose the two flagship universities. As a result, 70
percent of eligible Black and 60 percent of eligible Latina/o students turned
down the opportunity to attend the most selective institutions of higher
education in Texas despite their preferential admission. This is an important
issue that will require further qualitative research to understand why this
disparity is occurring. What we do know is that TTPP Black public higher
education enrollment increased 28 percent for midsized public institutions in
Texas enrolling between 10,000 and 30,000 students and 77 percent for
smaller institutions with less than 10,000 students between 2000 and 2006
(analyses not shown).
Table 3 — Top 10 Percent College One-Year Persistence, Texas
Public University Selectivity (2000-2008)
Year
20002001
20012002
University Type
White
Black
Latina/o
Top-Tier University 94.9%
93.3%
93.9%
Other Texas
University
86.3%
85.8%
86.2%
Top-Tier University 95.8%
95.0%
91.9%
Other Texas
University
85.2%
84.1%
87.9%
20022003
20032004
20042005
20052006
20062007
20072008
Top-Tier University 95.0%
93.2%
92.0%
Other Texas
University
86.0%
84.9%
86.8%
Top-Tier University 94.8%
92.9%
92.1%
Other Texas
University
87.0%
87.8%
85.8%
Top-Tier University 96.1%
93.8%
93.8%
Other Texas
University
86.2%
83.1%
82.9%
Top-Tier University 95.9%
93.8%
93.0%
Other Texas
University
86.5%
82.9%
84.6%
Top-Tier University 95.5%
92.5%
92.6%
Other Texas
University
86.6%
80.0%
84.8%
Top-Tier University 95.7%
93.7%
92.4%
Other Texas
University
81.6%
83.2%
86.5%
Table 3 shows that TTPP students who attended top-tier universities in
Texas tend to have higher persistence rates compared to all other
institutions in Texas, an average of about 10 percent between years and
race. This aligns with the literature that shows Black persistence is impacted
by demographic factors and institutional selectivity (Alon and Tienda 2005;
Reason 2009). Notably, while the overall gap remains relatively stable for
Whites and Latina/os, the gap between Black students attending flagships
and attending all other institutions expanded from 7.5 percent to 12 percent
from 2000 to 2008. This suggests that as more TTPP Black students enrolled
in less selective public higher education institutions in Texas, their
persistence steadily declined.
Table 4 — Top 10 Percent Six-Year Cohort Graduation Rate at Texas
Public Universities (Freshman Entering 2000-2003)
Year and University
Type
White
Black
Latina/o
Top-Tier University
87.7%
77.8%
77.9%
Other Texas University
69.4%
52.3%
57.6%
Top-Tier University
87.3%
80.3%
74.6%
Other Texas University
72.2%
52.0%
59.3%
Top-Tier University
86.5%
72.0%
77.8%
Other Texas University
68.6%
57.2%
59.6%
Top-Tier University
87.4%
75.2%
75.4%
Other Texas University
70.5%
56.7%
60.5%
1999-2000
2000-2001
2001-2002
2002-2003
1999-2003
Top-Tier University
87.2%
76.2%
76.4%
Other Texas University
70.1%
54.7%
59.4%
The historical graduation gap also exists between TTPP Black and White
students. The gap for the four cohorts averages to about 11 percent for TTPP
students at the top-tier institutions of higher education (see Table 4). At
about 16 percent, the average gap of the four cohorts is even larger
between White and Black TTPP students attending non-flagship institutions
of higher education. While the graduation rates are nearly the same for
Black and Latina/o TTPP students at UT-Austin and Texas A&M (an average
gap of about a tenth of a percent), on average, more Latina/os than Blacks
graduate from less-selective institutions (gap averages about 5 percent).
The overall gap within groups for cohorts entering between 1999 and 2003 is
also quite substantial by institutional selectivity: 17 percent for Whites and
Latina/os and about 22 percent for Blacks. Considering that 70 percent of
Black TTPP students do not attend Texas’s flagship universities, this large
graduation rate gap has a disproportionate impact.
Discussion
The question of why integration at UT-Austin has struggled from the Sweatt
period to the current day is mired in de jure, de facto, and societal factors.
First, the dismantling of Plessy in Texas took place in a context of what
historian Amilcar Shabazz (2004) termed “massive resistance”: procedural
and legal foot-dragging until as late as the mid-1960s. Even when legal
victories had been secured in federal courts, UT-Austin’s responses tended
to follow the letter, but not the spirit, of the law. The initial TSUN Law
School (the “Basement College”) was certainly separate but far from equal
(Goldstone 2006; Shabazz 2004). Although by 1956, 104 Black
undergraduate and graduate students were accepted at UT-Austin,
“unwritten policies” termed them second-class citizens (Duren and Iscoe
1979). Certain instances at the university became social factors that greatly
affected the reputation of UT-Austin, especially in Black communities. For
example, opera superstar Barbara Smith Conrad was denied the opportunity
to perform as the lead in a campus production in 1956 (Hames 2010), and
UT-Austin had the dubious distinction of being the last all-White national
championship football team in 1969 (Royal and Wheat 2005). With a strong
state network of Historically Black Colleges and Universities free from such
historical baggage (Willie et al. 2005), many TTPP Black students opted to
attend these institutions. The experiences of many early UT-Austin Black
students can be summarized in the words of alumnus John Hargis: “lonely
and unpleasant” (as quoted in Goldstone 2006, 46).
While these events might seem distant to some, it is apparent that these
wounds have yet to heal in the Black community. Historian Dwonna
Goldstone noted that “many observers believe that UT-Austin and Texas
A&M have not adequately addressed the negative racial climate that still
exists on both campuses” (2006, 153). She further discussed the
experiences of a student that struggled to make the decision to attend UTAustin:
When it came time to select a college, [the student’s] family and
friends warned him not to go to UT “because, quite frankly, the
environment of UT is known for racism among black people.
Hopwood, and other recent incidents in the past, have put African
Americans in a certain mindset about UT. A lot of older people told
me not to come here.” (as quoted in Goldstone 2006, 153)
Incendiary comments like UT-Austin law professor Lino Graglia’s 1997
statement that “Blacks and Mexican-Americans are not academically
competitive with Whites” because they grow up in cultures that “seem not to
encourage achievement” (as quoted in Goldstone 2006, 153) echo racist
beliefs of yesteryear.
It is always risky to attempt to predict what the future holds; however,
recent events give rise to the possibility that historic rifts are starting to
heal. The rise in African American enrollment in the midst of the TTPP, the
establishment of an administrative Division of Diversity and Community
Engagement, and the recent founding of the Department of African and
African Diaspora Studies, which promises to enhance scholarship and
research integral to the Black community, are considerable achievements for
UT-Austin. Campus iconography of the present day includes statues of the
Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., congresswoman Barbara Jordan, and
NFL Hall-of-Famer Earl Campbell. And in a redemptive effort, the pioneering
Black UT students (known as “The Precursors”) have returned to share their
experiences with the campus and local community. Today, the voice of the
university in public relations spots—formerly news icon Walter Cronkite—is
Barbara Smith Conrad, the same woman at the center of the opera
controversy of 1956.
Has UT-Austin come full circle? Will Black TTPP students continue to choose
non-flagship universities? Will the reduction of the TTPP to the top 8 percent
for the freshman class of 2011 reduce the enrollment of Blacks at UTAustin? Researchers and policy analysts will need to closely monitor how
these efforts, along with an increasingly conservative social and political
climate, constricting state budgets, and declining appropriations, affect Black
recruitment, enrollment, retention, and graduation rates. It is still an open
question as to whether UT-Austin will live up to its Texas constitutional
billing as a “university of the first class” for all its citizens.
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